Bara no sôretsu

I know this term doesn't necessarily get thrown around much by critics when describing most films - though conversely it may be used too often when trying to pin a label on counterculture or subversive: films from the late 190s or into the 70s - but Funeral Parade of Roses is a fairly accurate example I think of a film that is kaleidoscopic. You can't say it's one thing or even three things because it will shape-shift or twist over into something else entirely.

The director Matsumoto clearly knows what the rules are for directing a "normal" scene, whatever that is, and by that I mean how to cut between shots and show two characters talking to each other, or to create some suspense between two sets of people (ie right before that girl gang fight, before it leads into the fast motion), and that's good because he's not just ready but committed to breaking the rules of film grammar and storytelling. Story? Who needs that when you can follow things by feelings and moods, or how deconstructing everything has its own construction (and the interviews are so crucial because it gives us a base of how real Trans women are in Japan, or at least those interviewed and how they, in fact, are the most "normal" ones here).

And even trying to ascribe Oedipus Rex, which I've read is what this leaps off from, is not something I would think immediately.... no, that's not entirely true. Where the film ends up, a particular revelation that brings to a climax what we saw midway through, in a jarring flashback involving crimes of unhinged passion that is shot and acted and presented without any pretense and yet has an air of how memory creating a heightened style of violence - being so real it becomes unreal and then loops around to real again - is staggering and shocking, not necessarily for the violence itself but for the effect of it, how there's so much of it that what has to come next is when other people see it, how spectatorship takes on another dimension... and isn't isn't what cinema does itself?

I'm not Trans and can't claim I can be wholly in the sense of knowing where characters like Eddy or Leda or the others are at or have been here, but that almost isn't an issue because of the raw power that Matsumoto brings as a director and that the performers like Peter bring in every frame (especially those where nothing is said but the face and physical movements tell more). I have also/however been in an environment with fellow film freaks as much Marijuana is consumed and weird unclassifiable shenanigans ensue (hey, college you know), and in a sense Funeral Parade of Roses is like witnessing creation while under the influence; when one is high, there can be a sensation if one is tapping into the creative spirit that you can (and *should*) do or try anything.

So why shouldn't Matsumoto cut to inserts of butts with one holding a rose? Why not the fast speed that feels like an homage to silent comedy (and lo and behold Kubrick followed suit)? Why not have flesh and body parts that have comet together through sex and lovemaking like abstract images, not connected to beings but still very alive (Hiroshima Mon Amour comes to mind, a little, but this is still a unique way to do it)? All those faces and reactions and how a person moves through a frame? Go for it!

Funeral Parade of Roses is last but not least a compelling example of how what seem to be condtradictions in execution are part of the intended style, of confrontational the audience to say that you can't take for granted what cinema can do. So sex and eroticism is silly... until it isn't. Violence can be quite silly and comical.. until it very much isn't. How someone chooses to be as a human being, identity as a gender, looks so theatrical with the long eye-lashes and coiffed hair and slathering of make up... but it's very much who these "Queens" are and that being a woman is not some parlor trick or game, or just a lustful object for men. Humans are complicated and so should cinema, and that's what I got from seeing this for a first time.